Schrödinger’s cat fancy
“So is opera as vibrant as ever, or is it hanging on by a thread? How to write the history of an art form that hovers, Schrödinger’s catlike, simultaneously alive and dead?”
Review
An embarrassment of divas
As if last week’s survey wasn’t enough, a few more recent diva-recital disks remain worthy of attention particularly since they arrive from five front-rank singers.
No place like Rome
Love grand opera but wary of a six o’clock curtain with five hours of music behind it? (And nothing is grander than Berlioz’s Les Troyens, eh?) Your dilemma has been solved. Show up at the Met at 7:30 or 8:00, whenever they have the first intermission.
Water stories
You can see the logic of it: The Juilliard School wants to show off its opera program, the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, which is (on the evidence) brim-full of talent.
Divas merrily on high
Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato are not the only ladies who have recorded recitals this year featuring music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Carry on Cleo
Natalie Dessay coyly bares a breast on the cover of Virgin Classics’ new Giulio Cesare.
What the well-dressed Alexandrian will wear
“The courtesan’s entourage included dancing girls in filmy harem pants and bedazzled Afro wigs, and the hunky chorus boys pranced about in velour leggings, codpieces and nipple ornaments.”
Bear in mind
Before there was a Stefan Herheim Boheme (which I reviewed a couple of weeks back for this site), there was a Herheim Eugene Onegin, recorded in June 2011 at De Nederlanse Opera.
Odd numbers
All of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi contain music that is worth hearing and can be rewarding in good performances.
Bea in the bonnet
Everyone who revives Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, as the Collegiate Chorale did at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night, calls the piece an “overlooked masterpiece.”
Captivating in Babylon
Verdi’s first operatic masterpiece is well served by this DVD
of a performance from the Teatro Regio di Parma.
First steps
There’s something charming and almost irresistible about early Verdi opera. I always equate it to seeing a grade school test from Albert Einstein.
The woman in white
This new DVD
release from EMI of the Royal Opera’s latest production of Puccini’s Tosca will no doubt be snatched up by hordes of grateful fans around the globe.
Notte e giorno criticar
Imagine if someone left Vermeer’s masterpiece “Girl With a Pearl Earring” out in the rain.
Didon’t
The theatrical expression “You can’t tell the players without a program” was never more apt than when applied to Opus Arte’s release of Cavalli’s La Didone.
Not quite right
The last of the Strauss-Hofmannsthal collaborations, Arabella, is a real problem child.
Working “Tito”
After an uneven start to the season, the Met brought its A game Friday to a superb revival of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito.
The sun also rises
If you’re the sort who prefers his diva to be an unapproachable sphinx prone to infuriating cancellations while radiating ennui, I suspect that the sunny, hard-working, grateful persona of American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato will not appeal to you at all.
Who let the Doge out?
Once again, we’re back with the Parmigiani at the Teatro Regio and their Tutto Verdi project marking the upcoming bicentennial of the great maestro’s birth.
Death, warmed over
Kaiser Overall—the name is intended to be sung in English, though the opera is in German—is probably mad, though perhaps no madder than anyone else.
Small scale
In art, less is more — at least most of the time.
Gould standard
Midway through his traversal of Wagner’s 10 mature operas for PentaTone, we’ve learned this about Marek Janowski:
Swedish frisson
Last week’s freak nor’easter set the tone for Thursday’s chilly new production of Un Ballo in Maschera at the Met.